Jessica Cattelino is a sociocultural anthropologist who explores indigenous sovereignty and settler colonialism, environment, economy, and American public culture. She is author of High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty (Duke University Press, 2008), which examines the cultural, political, and economic stakes of tribal casinos for Florida Seminoles, and which won the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Memorial Book Prize (for best book published in the previous two years) from the Society for the Anthropology of North America. Her current research, which tells human stories of ecological restoration, examines the cultural value of water in the Florida Everglades. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Howard Foundation. Cattelino collaborates on a related anthropological and photographic exhibition and is part of an interdisciplinary NSF Long-term Ecological Research project on the Florida Everglades. She is an associate professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies and an affiliate in American Indian Studies at UCLA, where she is also Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Women and Vice Chair of the Graduate Council.
I am a sociocultural anthropologist of the contemporary United States with expertise along the following lines: the social life of water; the effects of living in a settler colonial society on everyday life in America; the cultural politics of nature in rural America, especially but not only at the intersection of nature and indigeneity; and indigenous sovereignty and economy, especially with regard to American Indian casino gaming. My current research explores the human stories of Florida Everglades restoration, and I am developing an ethnographic and survey-based research project on gender and household water use in Los Angeles, with plans to publish a Center for the Study of Women policy brief that addresses the drought. I have broad training in anthropology and gender studies, with additional focus in American Indian Studies. I regularly teach introductory sociocultural anthropology to hundreds of students, and that experience has improved my ability to convey complex ideas with clear language. My Everglades research connects to the arts (through a collaborative exhibit with a photographer) and the sciences (through a co-authored paper on phosphorus and a planned study of the social life of an important stormwater treatment area).
